Thursday Next

The link to the "Profitability" of Home was clearly in response to Chewie's suggestion that Home is unprofitable. "Good" is subjective. Lots of people obviously think Home is "good". You and Chewie clearly do not. Do you know how much it costs? It would take more than one person to design, render, test and upload a shirt, and no one in this industry is working for "next to nothing" so no, it does not cost "next to nothing" to create a digital shirt. The infrastructure and manpower required to keep a social network running, especially one as rich in content as Home is far from tiny so it's not simply a case of: 1. Set up Social Network. 2. Sell one digital t-shirt. 3. Profit!

The following is personal experience and opinion: It's got nothing to do with being from Eton and everything to do with people thinking that they are too good for certain jobs. I finished Uni with a law degree, came home, had no job, applied to some solicitors, some retailers, some supermarkets. My first job: Getting up a 4am to do stock counting at Sainsbury's. It was shit. I hated every minute of it, but, I am way too proud to sponge off the state. I've had more jobs than I can count over the years, from cleaning fryers in a cafe to silver service in 5* Hotels. I've delivered hire cars and sandwiches, done data entry, worked in building insurance, and in pubs. I have never been out of a job since I was 16 unless it was by choice. My sister has the same problem as a lot of these people. She wants to work in media and so refuses to get a "crappy job" in a shop. The result is that when she goes for a media job she rocks up with a degree and a blank CV. So she never gets the jobs she wants and the cycle continues. There are jobs in tanning factories (leather, not sun-tans) that are horrible, smell bad, and are bloody hard work, but usually (unsurprisingly) have vacancies. Anyone who doesn't have a job needs to lower their "standards". Around this time of year there are always a glut of jobs going in retail for the Christmas rush. If you can't find work, then I honestly believe you just aren't trying hard enough.

Assuming now that Chewie is done reading we can dispense with spoilers? For a while I was convinced that Beric Dondarrion was Azor Ahai, he had the proper flaming sword and was undying until he passed the gift onto Cat/Stoneheart. Now I wonder if with Jon's future not looking too rosy if Melissandre will revive him the way the Red Priest did Beric, either that or if Cat will pass the gift on to Jon (seems unlikely given their history) either way, it would see Jon possibly as the true Azor Ahai. I'm surprised that no one has drawn the parallel between Cersei taking a walk and being broken and Dany taking a walk and being forged anew. Surely this is the prophesied "Younger and more beautiful queen"? I think the Tyrion chapters were drawn out to give you an idea of the sort of distance he has travelled, it would sort of lose the sense of scale if Tyrion just popped up with Jorah outside Mireen.

7 out of 10? This is easily a 7.4 or maybe a 7.5. Jerk.

What I mean is, you take someone's money, there's a contract there. I don't mean just in law, I mean you've asked the other guys to do something, they've done it. Now you change your mind and they've just got to put up with it. It's wrong on so many levels.

What I mean is, for that particular demo, did everything have to be in place like, if someone moved the trolley on foot to the left or right, would the whole thing have not worked. Or is Asimo aware of its surroundings? I know it's programmed, I'm not a total nincompoop, but I'm not sure where on the scale it is from something like a big-trax in that it would do the same movements irrespective of context up to something completely autonomous that can be told to find a trolley and bring it over and pour a drink.

Much as I dislike piracy, I dislike people who kowtow and renege on agreements more. Especially when they've bought and paid for something and been completely up-front about who and what they are.

Ridiculous. I mean I know that any line you draw and say "This is now a person" be it at birth, or the 1st / 2nd / 3rd trimester is arbitrary, but how can two cells be a person?

So, is this stuff all pre-programmed? Like walk ten paces --> put arms out --> walk ten paces or is it more, "Go get the trolley." Maybe somewhere in between? Or is it remote controlled?

Besides which, in a years time there will be other offers, better offers. Maybe.

Bwahahahahahahaha!

Unfortunately, stats only get upped at the end of a round (or at least that's my understanding), so if you quit before round-end none of your terrible death streaks, horrible accuracy or appalling defeats are recorded.

At least now you know that things will blow up in cut-scenes.

Honest question, don't take it the wrong way. Really really good? Or usually quit before round ends in a loss?

Yup. As in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsSthazKKEY&feature=related#t=5m23s

I got hung up on the Chapter 19 glitch (data on the cache gets corrupted). It was fairly panic inducing as the level would not even load, loading in to the previous chapter just brought me up to the same hang. However, finished it on Hard yesterday, need to do a crushing playthrough, then some Treasure and Trophy whoring on very easy or whatever it is after that. Great campaign. Not tried MP or Coop yet.

Fixed! Also, words that sound better in American: "ass" > "arse" even though "Ass" is a donkey sort of animal, and I refuse to use it. I will admit that "I'm gonna kick your ass." sounds a lot more... punchy, than "I'm going to kick your arse." Finally, "bastard" sounds better in the North of England (with the "a" pronounced like in "ass") than in the South where the "a" is pronounced as in "arse". Case in point...

Who's anti-AB? Thinking that Rovio are over-valuing themselves at $1.2 billion (which I do, 500 million copies reeks of market saturation and not much potential for growth for that game) is not the same as not liking Angry Birds.

Love Buzzcocks. Amstel is still the besterest they ever had.

I have never wanted an (English) Mars bar so much in my entire life.

They better let me build a flippin' empire! If I get a job as a janitor for the guy with the big house and end up in the same job with enough money to pay off the US deficit twice over I will be PISSED (and not as in drunk).

You can stack your plus subs. So you wouldn't be "fucked" as such, just well prepared.

The only way Home would "work" in my opinion is if Sony did something along the lines of the Battlefield / Battlelog thing. They would need to replace the XMB with Home. Have your games appear on a shelf in you apartment instead of in a menu, to add someone as a friend you need to do so through Home, make the PSN store a store within Home, etc. As it is, it's too far out of the average users path to get much traffic (as a % of user base, I'm sure there are 10,000s of people that do use it regularly). They would annoy a lot of people to begin with, but eventually they'd get used to it... or Sony would die a slow painful death.

I would, but my pings are so shit over on nearly all UK servers. When they fix rubberbanding on 64p conquest I will definitely give it a shot, though. I've been kinda sucking at BF3, though, and my SPM is pretty shit right now, so I'll probably be spending some time in squad deathmatch or team deathmatch to get better with some of the weapons and learn some of the maps. For those that are having trouble I'd definitely try that, it worked wonders in BC2. If you want to "practice" I'd go Co-Op. You can still earn upgrades and what not for MP, but you won't have the same mismatch as you might against humans.

True, in a Blair gov't we would have said "No". As for the legislative veto. It says he has "scrutinised" not "vetoed" 12 bills. Don't think this is any different to Royal Assent really. He could go around vetoing bills, but he'd soon lose the power to do so if it got out of hand. I love how changing the laws of succession is seen as modernising. If anything, I'm a royalist rather than a republican, but they do strike me as a little silly sometimes.